Archive for December, 2014

Most people have good self-control. Even when angered or jostled, most people can keep it together.
But some people sometimes lose control and go into fits of rage, creating tense moments for those around them.

For someone who wants to regain control, it’s important to identify how rage begins and what alternative behaviors are available. Therapists recommend these four steps for accomplishing these tasks.

Tune in to what is going on in your body that lets you know you are bout to lose control.

Figure out what happened to make you feel this way.

Think about ways in which you might control yourself.

Choose the best way to control yourself and do it.

It’s unrealistic to expect someone who has lost control to calmly and deliberately go through each of these steps. So here’s an exercise that may help: Think back to a time when you lost control. What triggered the event? What signals did your body give off that you were about to lose it? With the answers to these two questions, you can engage in a mental exercise that can help prevent losing control in the future. Picture the same circumstance. Imagine your body giving you the same signals that you’re about to lose control. then, imagine yourself doing something else, anything else, constructive. Imagine this over and over again until you have the alternative behavior firmly imbedded in your mind. You’ll find that the next time you begin to feel rage, your mind will already be sending you the message that you have a choice – you don’t have to lose control.

Sleep deprivation is a common condition that afflicts 47 million American adults, or almost a quarter of the adult population. Symptoms can interfere with memory, energy levels, mental abilities, and emotional mood. The condition drastically affects the body’s ability to metabolize glucose, leading to symptoms that mimic early-stage diabetes.

Exhaustion, fatigue and lack of physical energy are common sleep deprivation symptoms. Exhaustion and fatigue affect our emotional moods, causing pessimism, sadness, stress and anger. The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) has suggested that social problems such as road rage may be caused in part, by a national epidemic of sleepiness.

The Sleep in America poll, conducted by the NSF, indicates that the average American adult now only sleeps 6.9 hours a night, leading to fatigue, exhaustion and other symptoms. Shift workers suffer more than other people: may shift workers average only five hours a night.

So how much sleep do you need? Different people require different amounts of rest. While the majority of adults should spend between eight to nine hours asleep, a small number of people function perfectly well with much less. The time a person spends asleep also changes with age. Here’s a list of how much sleep by age people should get a night: